


Defenseless

by Cielestine_de_Winter



Category: Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-06
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-29 09:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3891019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cielestine_de_Winter/pseuds/Cielestine_de_Winter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q was not quite as defenseless as he looked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defenseless

“So, it was really that easy?” John asked Sherlock for the third time. Sherlock grimaced and didn’t bother to answer. It was fairly obvious that what John meant was something more along the lines of ‘why couldn’t you have dealt with Moriarity as quickly in the first place?’ but was far too polite to frame it quite like that.

To be fair, though, Mycroft too had seemed a little surprised at the speed at which the Moriarity situation resolved itself after the villain had made a series of fatal judgement errors based around a monumentally incorrect assumption. That assumption was that Q was as defenseless as he looked.

He wasn’t.

Not even vaguely.

And more to the point of this tale, even if the youngest Holmes was in anyway defenseless, his friends, co-workers, and pretty much everyone who knew him were rather the polar opposite of defenseless.

To a ridiculous degree.

We could start this tale at the point where Q, the youngest Holmes, first learned that he had brothers. A botched kidnapping and subsequent gas explosion tore Q away from his family when he was 6. Amnesiac, injured, and very frightened, Q had managed to fall in with a family of petty criminals who quickly realized that he had the potential to be their ticket to greatness. They taught him everything they could, from picking pockets to running highly complicated criminal operations involving any number of egomaniacs, whores, harden criminals, and just plain sadistic bastards. He taught himself the rest, including how to hack, which, fortunately for the government, put him on MI6’s radar. When the head of MI6 met the quiet, unassuming but terrifyingly competent twenty something behind some of most audacious crimes in recent history, it took her all of 5 minutes to go from coveting to converting him to her cause. Mi6 flourished, mostly due to Q’s almost fanatical belief in M’s cause. It was at this point that Mycroft became interested in MI6 and its success, thus leading him back to the beloved younger brother that he had never quite given up looking for. Mycroft called Sherlock, and once again the three brother were reunited.

In reality, Q did not take being reunited with his brothers easily. He had spent most of his life looking out for himself and was completely unprepared for Mycroft’s and Sherlock’s suffocating attention. Mycroft, having learned a little discretion through his dealings with Sherlock was a slightly more tactful. Sherlock was too happy and excited that his brother was returned to him and had too little self-awareness to understand the concept of boundaries. Thus when he waylaid Q outside his apartment after waiting for him for three days, he was a little too focused on his brother to notice that he was being watched.

Q, for his part, had just spent the last week walking double – ohs through back to back missions of various complexity. He had managed the odd nap on the couch in his office, but after a week of living off cups of tea and very little sleep, he was cranky and not at all in the mood to deal with Sherlock’s enthusiasm.

The subsequent argument was quiet, angry, and held in front of Q’s building for Moriarity’s men to witness. When those men reported back to their boss, Moriarity’s interest was piqued. Moriarity sat in front of his computer and traced the man Sherlock argued with back to Vauxhall. He, of course knew that Vauxhall was the home of MI6 so he was very careful when hacking into their systems to uncover his identity. According to Vauxhall’s confidential personnel files, Alec Frost was a rather boring junior accountant who had worked for MI6 for two years. His performance reviews were lackluster and his single redeemable feature seemed to be the fact that he was dedicated. A dead aunt had willed him a rather nice flat and his finances were duller then the instruction manual of a waffle iron.

It never occurred to Moriarity to look deeper. The young man dressed shabbily and although he did have a passing resemblance to Sherlock, he also looked like a too thin scarecrow left out in the rain for far too long. So within a half an hour of hearing his men’s report of Sherlock and Alec’s fight, Moriarity put out the order to have Alec brought to him. He wanted to find out for himself what had Sherlock so interested that he waited outside the man’s flat for three days just for a chance to argue.

The mission should have been easy. There was an odd reoccurring computer glitch that started happening that pulled Moriarity’s attention from the actual mission. He asked his second in command, Sebastian Moran to head up the rather routine kidnapping.

Sebastian and his team of three men gained access to the Alec Frost’s flat, but was surprised to find a man in a suit siting in a chair reading a magazine waiting for them. Within seconds, the three men were dead and Sebastian was on his knees in front of the man, who thoughtfully cautioned him against making any loud noises as he disarmed him. Apparently, Alec Frost was asleep. The man in the suit’s smile promised all sorts of unpleasantness, but Sebastian didn’t really understand his situation until he was turned over to another man who arrived at the flat 10 minutes later. The man, another Alec, spoke briefly to the man in the suit. This Alec was huge and build like a brick shit house. Sebastian, who was used to using his large size to intimidate others, felt considerably diminished when the new Alec picked him up by the arm and lead him to a black car. Sebastian attempted to escape, but the new Alec smiled and said “Cute” before completely incapacitating Sebastian and putting him in a world of pain. With one hand. Without slowing his leisurely pace to the car.

And that was the end anyone heard of Sebastian Moran.

Jim Moriarity at this time had his hands full. That odd glitch had playfully infected Moriarity’s network with a tiny virus that caused all data to be rewritten in wingdings. Then it somehow jumped Moriarity’s connected network and infected all of Moriarity’s numerous aliases and allies. After an hour of trying to find the root cause of the virus, Moriarity realized that the virus was directly linked to Alec Frost’s personnel record. And that is was very quickly dissolving his empire into a wash of wingdings. Calls started coming in from all over the world. No one in Moriarity’s circle of supporters were safe. Moriarity realized the seriousness of the situation and tried to leave the nice brownstone he had been living only to find a man and a woman waiting for him next to a black car. Thinking that the Mycroft was waiting for him in the car, he went without a complaint. It was only after the car brought him to the bowels of MI6 that he thought, perhaps, he miscalculated. He was put in a small windowless room and left there.

Jim Moriarity didn’t know how long he had been waiting. He had slept a little while sitting on the floor. No food or water had been brought to him. No one had responded went he had attempted to get their attention so that he could use the facilities.

Then the door opened and a man brought in a chair and a table. Another brought a tea tray and set it on the table and proceeded to make a cup of tea. Then they both stepped away and stood at attention. Moriarity’s stomach gurgled and he was wondering if he should help himself when the door opened again and a matronly lady walked in. She sat primly on the chair and smiled when she took a sip of the tea. She looked at Moriarity for a few minutes.

“I put in my order for room service, but it’s running a little slow,” Moriarity said finally.

“Pity,” the woman said. “I seldom involve myself in domestics, but since this involves our boffin, I thought I would make an exception.”

“Your boffin? Sherlock Holmes?” Moriarity asked, slightly confused.

The woman laughed. “No. Although getting Mycroft in my debt is a very attractive side benefit to this whole affair.” The woman sipped her tea again. “There are two sins that you’ve committed, Mr. Moriarity. The first is that you’ve grossly underestimated us. Do you really think our files are that easy to hack?”

“I did access the personnel record I wanted.”

The woman smiled. “And did it seem odd to you that a low paid accountant would spend weeks at his desk without returning home even for sleep?”

“He was cited for his dedication.”

“He is very deserving of that citation,” the woman shrugged. “But I don’t think there is an accountant alive that would live on earl grey for days without sleep as he does on a regular basis.” She sipped her tea again.

“What was my second sin?” Moriarity asked after another long pause.

“You tried to disturb the boffin’s sleep.” The woman set her teacup down. “You see, Mr. Moriarity, when someone such as the Quartermaster decides he needs sleep, you let him sleep.”

Moriarity blinked, his smile fading from his face. “He’s Q?” The truth was, Moriarity knew little about MI6 aside that is was a small mostly underfunded group of killers and spies for the government. They marginally reported to Mycroft, but pretty much were thugs that no-one really messed with by choice. The one interesting rumor was that they had somehow gotten a hold of a fairly decent IT guy who for some inexplicable reason, they renamed Quartermaster, or Q. Moriarity didn’t pay too much attention. Anyone with the smallest amount of talent would have jumped ship to where the money was long ago. Sitting on the floor, looking at the woman sipping tea above him, he reconsidered his disinterest. “I would like to make a phone call.”

The woman smiled at him and stood up. “That’s nice.” She glanced at the two men behind her and they quickly jumped to clean up her dishes. The woman looked at Moriarity again. “In case you were wondering, the virus that infected your systems when you accessed Q’s fake personnel record has given us complete access to your network and the networks of anyone you’ve had contact with. It’s also given us the names of all of your allies and supporters. It may take a while, but I think once they all figure out that their bank accounts have untraceably vanished they will reconsider looking for you.”

Moriarity thought back to the innocuous seeming little glitches that where the first signs of the virus. Tiny, almost impossible to detect. Suddenly the weight of his error crashed down on him. “What are you going to do with me?”

“With you?” the woman asked, with a mocking smile. “You don’t exist. You’ve done an admirable job at being hard to find but Q’s virus made you impossible to find. Anyone searching will be tagged and misfortunes will befall them. Grave misfortunes. The multiple fail safes you’ve put in place have been rendered harmless and removed. It was a training contest for MI5. I believe the winning team got movie tickets. They were very excited. My double-ohs are currently drawing lots as to see who closes this file. I think I may let Q design something special for the winner. They do like his little gadgets. Well, I shouldn’t keep that person waiting any longer. Good bye, Mr. Moriarity.”

“I know who you are. Who you really are. I will talk…”

“To whom? My agent? I think he or she will be too interested in your demise then any information you may try to tempt them with.”

“How do you know you got all the fail safes? I could do some damage…” he said in a singsong voice.

The woman smiled again. “I don’t care. Whatever hellfire you rain down on us will be the tiniest pinch. We will endure. All the better for your absence.”

“I will work with you, tell you everything I know.”

“I won’t work with you. Good bye.” The woman knocked on the door and it opened. She walked out, followed by the two men. A well-dressed man walked in with a smile.


End file.
